


dream a little dream of me

by CodaAtTheEnd



Series: On The Origin of Egos [5]
Category: Jacksepticeye Power Hour (Web Series), Markiplier TV (Web Series), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Dreams, Nightmares, Omens, Puppets, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CodaAtTheEnd/pseuds/CodaAtTheEnd
Summary: The Egos, habitual oblivion, and dreams.
Series: On The Origin of Egos [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1442656
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23





	dream a little dream of me

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains Iplier Egos, JSE Egos, NWTB Egos, and MadPat/Antimatter(Seriously, fandom, pick a name!). Go learn about them, because they are cool. In my verse, Natemare is called Nightmare and uses it/its pronouns. Phantom uses it/its as well. Deal with it.  
> Also, first lowercase title. Very exciting.

Marvin sleeps regularly, dreams regularly, lives regularly. His dreams are the normal ones, about life and worries and fears. Nothing amiss at all. But then there are the ones about fractals and spirals and madness. The ones where he wakes up screaming. 

It's the magic, that much he knows. He didn't give up anything for this power. Not like Zach, who gained everything and lost everything. Not like the many people in stories, who lose everything to gain everything. Magic should never be free. You lose to gain, and that was the thing he forgot for the briefest of moments when they found that book. He forgot that magic gives what you give, and nothing is free. 

Magic is not forgiving of those who circumvent the rules. His penance starts with the dreams. It ends with his death. He's pieced this together from fables and legends, but he knows it's true. He will die young, and he's made peace with that. The magic doesn't respond to him like it would for a proper magician. It fights him at every turn, trying to escape the false mage. He lets it fight him and uses its rebellion to improve his finesse. He will never be skilled, and he's made peace with that. 

What he hasn't made peace with are the dreams about Zach. He doesn't know if these are products of his tattered conscience or magic punishing him, but he hates them all the same. He hates the dreams and loves the dreams and hates that he loves the dreams. He can't help but love the dreams. At least then he can see Zach again. At least then he can finally apologize for not keeping him safe. At least then he can hope Zach is still alive somewhere.

 _He's sitting in their apartment, flipping through a trashy romance novel in a futile attempt to distract from what awaits him. He doesn't want to look up. He knows he will eventually, but he'll fight as long as he can. He can_ _hear Zach doing normal apartment things like doing the dishes and typing away at his computer. He can sense Zach standing in front of him, waiting for him to look up._

_Eventually, inevitably, he glances upwards. Zach is standing there, watching him silently._

_"You promised, you know," Zach says sullenly. "Best friends forever."_

_"I know," he replies. "I know what we promised."_

_"We said we'd follow each other wherever we go," Zach snarls. "We swore a blood oath." Zach holds out his hand, showing the faded scar slashed across it. "Does it mean nothing to you?"_

_"It means everything to me," he whispers back._

_"You could fix it," Zach says gently, soothingly, placatingly. "I can't come back to you, but you could come to me. You could go to Phantom."_

_Marvin stares at the ghost that wears his friend's skin and does his best not to cry. He is partially successful. "I know," he repeats, because there is nothing else he can say._

_The image of his friend pleads with him, but he does not relent. At long last, the simulacrum fades away._

He wakes up with tears dripping down his face and tries not to break. He fails.

* * *

Wilford Warfstache doesn't sleep a lot. It's time spent being _still_ when he could be having fun instead. But sometimes, when he forgets to forget about exhaustion, he passes out on his blindingly pink sofa, afro slightly askew. 

His dreams are either sickenly sweet and peppy or horrifically violent and terrifying. He prefers the former, of course. It's always more fun when _he's_ the violent one. Witnessing violence is just so _boring_. And he's usually a little less manic after those dreams. They make him lucid, and that's the worst thing he can imagine. Thinking clearly is something he does his best to avoid, if at all possible. But it's really not up to him.

 _Damien's gone missing. He looks and looks but he can't_ find _him, and the body on the floor is_ real _. He shot Mark, but that's not really killing. He was asking for it, so it wasn't murder. It_ wasn't _. It WASN'T. The blood is everywhere. Damien would be so tetchy about that. He always wanted everything_ pristine. _The place_ definitely _wasn't pristine any more, no thanks to the Detective and the DA. Damien would be so_ mad _._

 _The thought brings a smile to his face for a moment before the joy withers. Damien's gone, Celine's gone, Mark's gone, the DA's gone. The last two, he knows are because of him. The first two... He doesn't know a thing. He doesn't know what happened other then the fact that they're gone._ _They're gone and he'd rather forget everything, lose everything he's ever had with them, than to remember them being_ gone _. They're not dead. They_ can't _be._

_Then the DA gets back up. Of course! They're not dead! Nobody's dead! It was all a prank! Damien.. Celine... You can come out now..._

He wakes up with tears running down his face, and he laughs because if he didn't he would sob and cry and scream, and that's just not _him_. He's not sad. He's never sad. Not anymore. Not when he can't remember. Not when the Manor is tucked away beneath the soothing blanket of madness. Not when Damien and Celine are lost to the twisting currents of his mind. Not when the story has lost all the history, all the details, all the things that make people _alive_.

He's not really alive anymore. None of them are. But that doesn't stop them from living. If life needs a bit of madness, he's got that in spades. If life is theirs to choose, he can choose madness, because the other options are ones he can't accept. If life is for the living... If life is for the living, he doesn't deserve it, but then again, he never did. Better to take what he doesn't deserve and enjoy it than be _nothing_. 

This is why he doesn't like sleep. Being nothing, being void, being oblivion... It's like being dead, only he has to face it every night. He hates it. He hates being reminded that death is a thing that is real. But he arises, awakens, forgets. Everything is fine. Everything is as it should be. 

He is awake, and that is how it should stay.

* * *

Jameson Jackson sleeps often and deeply, as peacefully as a baby(a good one, not the fussy ones that wake you in the night). Without sleep, he barely feels human. It refreshes him, makes him feel more himself. It's nice, to be calm for hours, finally quiet and still. It reminds him of home.

He dreams of forests and birds and people with wide smiles. He loves dreaming, has since he was a boy, and he cannot help but feel a strange sense of pride when he finds himself dreaming about the forest by the village he grew up in. He's grown beyond his village now, but he knows this place as he does his very self, and though it was not home, it was a place he lived for a while.

_He is walking through familiar trees at the edge of the river, where the water splits around an island in the centre of the river. With a smile, he leaps onto the rock, barely getting wet at all. On the island, there is a familiar face waiting for him. He loves their talks, their games, their riddles. He adores managing to fool his friend. He cannot help but laugh at his friend's tricks._

_His friend is sitting at the usual meeting spot, playing with the river. The water leaps up to circle its hands, and it laughs at the river. At his approach, it looks up and grins, the blue streaks down its face standing out in the light._

_"You've done well," it says. "Look at you, practically a proper mage!"_

_Jameson grins, pride straightening his shoulders._

_"I mean it." It leaps up and walks towards him. "You've done something magnificent here. I didn't expect you to be one of Odin's children. Sacrificing yourself to yourself, very clever. Your voice for your name. Brilliant! Not even I could do better."_

_It places a hand on his shoulder in a cheap facsimile of parental care and smiles broadly, revealing each and every one of its teeth. "Good job."_

When Jameson wakes up, he is smiling so widely his face hurts and tear tracks stain his cheeks. It was _proud_ of him. It thought he did a _good job_. No mortal language could even attempt to approximate his emotions right now. The joy lighting up his heart and the horror running down his spine refuse to reconcile. He doesn't know if he's crying because he's happy or smiling because he's upset, but his mentor _sees_ him now.

The blue streaking down his face fades agonizingly slowly, and the face in the mirror is not his own. He blinks, and the vision of _red red red_ is gone. His face stares back at him, empty, adrift, alone. He does not know if he misses it or hates it. Maybe both, maybe neither, maybe he'll never be free. _(Maybe he's lying to himself. Maybe he knows intimately the chains that bind them. Maybe he can see the strings.)_

* * *

The Host doesn't dream often, but when he does, he dreams of nightmarish landscapes forged of horror and fear, filled with forests that whisper names he doesn't know and never wants to hear again, birds that mock him with perfectly crafted insults designed to pierce and wound and maim, beasts that feast on despair and grow fat on the death of hope, people that speak in riddles and games that cannot be won. 

Rarer are the dreams about his world, about real people. He doesn't know them, but he knows the type. Desperate people, greedy people, empty people. People with nothing to lose and everything to gain. The _thing_ that lives under his skin loves those people like a mechanic loves broken things. It drapes itself over them like a blanket and _whispers_ to them. When it finally unwraps itself from their minds, they see _red_ and _ink_ and a future that seems a little less broken.

And rarest of them all are the dreams about _his_ people, about the people he has made a home with despite his best efforts. They are not happy dreams. 

_Dark dragged around by the void inside him instead of the other way around. The Jims screaming as the glass embeds itself inside them. Wilford giggling as he shoots bullets into the people he calls friend. Bim tearing out King's throat with his teeth, feasting on the flesh he craves. Derek finally getting rid of his useless son. Google on the fritz, calmly dismantling Bing for parts. Yan dismembering Senpai with bare hands. And the Host, finally returning to the cabin he once lived in, waiting for the monster_ _that approaches. It is here, closer, closer, and finally it stands before him._

 _"Are you ready?" it asks, and the Host has been ready since he tore out his eyes. It smiles at him, and the Host smiles back. Everything is_ red _and_ ink _and_ madness _._

He does not know if the dreams are his dreams, its dreams, or its memories. Time has no meaning for it. The future is the past is the present and memory is of everything not _now_. He does not know which he would prefer. If he is the one dreaming of strange places and desperate people and _his_ people bleeding and hurting and dying, then at least its hold of him is only skin deep. At least his mind is clear. If it is the one dreaming of beautiful places and starving people and his people screaming and laughing and crumbling, then at least that future is not set in stone. At least his people aren't doomed. And if it is remembering, then...

He does not want to lose them. He does not want to leave them. He does not want to turn on them. He doesn't know how he grew so attached, but he is caught now, and he does not know if he would rather have them and lose them or never have them at all. If he could be the Author, so arrogant, so bold, so heartless, without these _dreams_ , without the chains of attachment holding him tight, would he give this up? Would he go back to being that person? He doesn't know. He really doesn't know.

* * *

Anti likes sleeping. It's a moment of _silence_ in the static, a breath of fresh air in the depths of the ocean. It's... relaxing. It's hard for him to actually fall unconscious, but when he does, he tries not to dream. He doesn't like dreaming. If he wanted to experience things, he would be awake. At least reality lines up properly and makes a little _sense_. His dreams are either scattered, filled with flashing knives and dripping blood and g̛l͏i̕͝t҉̶c͏h̨i͏n̸g͟ images, or far too sensical, composed of memories he'd give anything to get rid of. It's like drowning in the infinite sea of his life, and he'd much rather live it than drown in it.

When he sleeps, he dreams. It's a certainty, an inevitability, so he tries not to sleep, and when he does, he tries to wake up. This ploy works most of the time, but on occasion, he sleeps long enough and deeply enough to slip into a dream. 

_He's holding a knife, warm and familiar in his hands. A body lies limp before him, as per usual. Blood drips steadily to the floor like a ticking clock. It's calming to feel the warm blood cool in the frosty night air, to toss the knife back and forth between his hands, to watch the lifeblood trickle out of the corpse before him. It's soothing, like a cup of hot tea on an evening just like this. A warmth in his bones only fed by the taking of life._

_Bored of watching the corpse, he rolls it over so he can pick it up and carry it off. There is some resistance from an arm caught under some fallen rubbish bins, but he finally manages it. He glances at the face only to freeze like a rabbit caught by the hunter at long last. Staring back at him is_ his face _, throat slit and blood dripping down._

 _The knife in his hand is no longer a comfort. It's something strange and unfamiliar, something he doesn't know like the back of his hand. He knows all of his knives. He has memorized the feel of every weapon he owns. He doesn't recognize this knife. It's not his knife. It's not his_ knife _. Į̶t'̧̡s̡ ̸̸n̕oţ̛͝ ҉͠h͏i̶̵̢s͝͝ ̷k̛̕n̶i̢f͘e.̴͠_

 _He backs away in a blind panic, away from his corpse's leering stare, away from the_ judgement _burning in his corpse's eyes. He's not dead. He can't be. It's not_ real _. But if it's not real, why does his throat hurt so much? Carefully, gingerly, he brushes a finger against his throat. It comes away red. He blinks, and suddenly he's not in an alleyway, staring at his corpse and contemplating his own demise. He's home, sitting on a cold tile floor covered in the remnants of a mirror, holding a shard of glass in one hand._

_The glass is as sharp as any knife, and it cuts cleanly. The blood gleams in the light like rubies, and he grins wildly. The shard is remarkably clean for having passed through his throat, though it is strangely opaque, as if someone caught a swirling storm of darkness inside it. It's pretty regardless, though he thinks he would like it more if he wasn't bleeding out. As the warm embrace of oblivion envelops him, he smiles honestly for the first time in years._

When he wakes up, his throat is bleeding violently, like the cut was just made, and his eyes are wet. He hates remembering things, even through the nonsensical mish-mash that is his dreams. Memory fades quickly though, and soon he doesn't remember remembering, doesn't remember why his form is glitching so fast or why he's flicking his knife or why he can't stop crying.

"C͏̶̸a͠l҉͜͞m͘͢ ̨d͘o͏w͞n҉,̛" he whispers to himself. "Y̨͢͠o̶̕u̕'̡̧r̷ę͡ ̕n̷̛o̢͘t̢҉ ͏a̶͝ w͢҉ea̸͟kl̨i͠n̵͡͠ģ.҉̵͟ ̨̨Stop̶͞ ̵̡͡c̸͠r̷̸͘y̛͘͡i̷͟ng̕.͞" He takes deep breaths and thinks of his favorite things _(t͜h͜ę͜ g͢͠l̵͜a̷͘c͢i͟͡͡al ̕̕s͏p̶͟re̴̵a̸ḑ҉ ̸̡͡of ͞b̛l̵̨o͏̶͢od ҉̵a̕͏͢cŗ͟͝ǫ̷͞ş̕s̸͜ ҉a͞ ̶oņ̢c̡҉e͜-̧̛͡c̛͜l̵̕e̷̡͏a̸ņ̛̛ ̢̛s̛͠u̡̨rf͞a̢̢c̴͞͞e̵͡,҉̷ ̸̢͘p͠us͜h̕i̧ng͟ ͠a̢̡͠ k̛ni҉f͘e̡ ҉t̢̢̨h̕҉r͏҉o̷̡u͟g̷̵̛h͠ ̸f͜͟l͠e̴s̡h̷,͞͞ ̶̡w̸̢͟a҉̸̸t̵ch͏͜in͘g̨͞ ̴̸̢t̷͘he̕ ̸҉li̵g͘͢h̸t͏ ̨f͢a͝d̢̛e̕͢ ͜f̵̢r̵̡̛om̸͡ ͘his̛͞ ̢vi̵̛c͡t͢i̵m'̸͘͠ş̴̵ ͜e҉̨y̶͝e҉̡͞s̛͠)̵_ _,_ but it's still a long time before he is calm.

* * *

Dark sleeps not because he wants to, but because he has to. The components that make him up need rest to keep themselves whole, so they sleep, and he sleeps. Usually, it's a tradeoff. Damien sleeps, then Celine sleeps, and the body is always awake. The Darkness doesn't need to sleep. Time has no meaning for it, so habitual oblivion provides it no peace. It doesn't need it anyway. It has peace aplenty, and stopping for a moment would be pointless. A waste of time that could be spent finding _him_. 

But sometimes, they sleep at the same time, usually after some important work that required both of them for an extended length of time. In those times, the Darkness goes into a sort of dormancy, the closest it can get to sleep. Like a computer given no inputs, the Darkness without a soul does nothing, says nothing, is nothing. And so, like the souls within it, it dreams.

Its dreams are their dreams, and their dreams are its dreams. There is no separating them anymore. They are one now, and cannot separate enough to be many. They were three, and now they are one, and some things just can't be fixed. And so it dreams, and they dream, and the Darkness dreams with them. Its dreams are not dreams, for it has no mind with which to conjure images that never happened. Its dreams are reality.

_They dream in three perspectives, and one perspective, and all space is one space, and all time is one time. Damien smiles, and Celine glares, and the House watches, waits, wonders. Three beings, one being, time is not a line but a tapestry, each thread tracing its path in one great work. They are not one, but they will be, and the House remembers and laughs for the thing they will become._

_The House loves them all, the Actor, the Mayor, the Seer, the Colonel, the Detective. They are part of the House, and the House is part of them. It gives them everything they ask for, except escape. No one is allowed to leave. No one_ can _leave. It's impossible. The Actor tries his best, but the Darkness is welcoming, and the House gives him what he wants. An end to the pain, an end to the grief, an end to the suffering. He doesn't mourn anymore._

 _Celine leaves regretfully, knowing that Mark will not do well without her, but he's_ changed _, and the House feels so dark and cold, and she still loves him, but this is not the man she married. William is the same as always, an anchor in chaotic times, and she leaves with him. She loves Mark, but William is warm where he is cold, kind where he is harsh, sweet where he is bitter, and she wonders why she didn't leave sooner. She wants the guilt to fade, and it does. She wants her hesitation to fade, and it does. She wants to forget him, and she does. Soon she does not remember why she loved him in the first place. Soon she has forgotten everything he was before the Void. Soon she does not remember the past at all._

_Damien knows nothing. He runs about, doing his best, but it is like a rock trying to hold back the tides. Celine wants him to be ignorant, so the House obliges. He cannot know the truth. He cannot see the game. He trusts her, so he follows her lead and hopes she is not leading him astray. His doubts are quiet ones, barely noticed by himself, but they are there. The House sees them, knows them, tastes them, and watches them grow. Each and every step leads him closer to the Darkness that tugs on his soul, on all of their souls, and it knows the truth and it knows the lies and it knows the spaces in between. Damien is a good man, but he is not without faults. No one is without faults. That is the beauty/horror of the House. It does not add to people, nor does it take away. It merely amplifies what is already there. He trusts her. He will never stop trusting her._

_The House claims the Actor because it had claimed the Actor because it will claim the Actor because the Actor is/was/will be a part of it and memories are as ephemeral as the past/present/future. The House claims the Seer's corpse because it had claimed the Seer's corpse because it will claim the Seer's corpse because it remembers claiming the Seer's corpse. Even so, some dim, distant part of itself is still surprised when the body crumbles, falling apart from the sheer power of the Void. The Seer slides into the Detective Attorney's skin and cl̡̛a̷i҉m̕s̢͢͞ it. The Mayor follows because he trusts her. He cannot stop trusting her. The mirror shatters. The Void_ s̡̧͢͡c̸͜͡҉r͝͠e̵̵͞͝a͟͡m̷s̶͟͡ _in terror, in torment, in triumph._

_They leave the house wearing the Detective Attorney's skin, reshaped to suit them. They are the Darkness, they are the Madness, they are the Void that is not Empty. Their bones crack with every step, their lungs burn for air they don't need, their chest bleeds from a bullet they didn't take, but they have a mockery of life, and they will cling to it until their cold, dead fingers no longer have the strength to hold it tight. The water rises around them, and they open their eyes._

The Echoing Darkness amalgamation dreams rarely, dreams often, doesn't dream at all. It's not a dream if it really happened, and he ~~ _(they_ _)_~~ knows his ~~ _(their)_~~ life well. The dream is reality, and sleep has never been a haven. He ~~ _(they)_~~ lies down on the bed and stares at the ceiling, thinking of nothing at all. The void that is his ~~ _(their)_~~ mind has never been so loud.

* * *

The entity called Nightmare by some and Natemare by more does not need to dream, but the Dreaming has always been a beautiful place. A realm with no consequences, perfect for practice. If it is ever going to be a proper bargainer, it needs all the training it can get. Its mentor has taught it many things, but mastery takes a lifetime. It also uses the Dreaming for other things, like targeting mortals, flyting with Mad, and speaking to his disciple. 

But sometimes, it _wants_ to lose time, to fade away for a breath, to awaken in a new era. When the world is cold and grey and void, it escapes into the sanctuary that is the Dreaming. Its coping mechanism is probably unhealthy, but that's all it has, so it dives headfirst into the depths of the infinite sea.

 _It sits in a room and the room is cold and everything is grey and the void blurs the world at the edges and it doesn't_ like _the way everything fades. Everything_ _blindingly colorful, and it can't block the_ vibrancy _because its eyes can't close, and everything is a false paradise, illusions will not satisfy it, lies and games are its bread and butter, but nothing_ matters _. It knows, and so the world is not enough._

_The child is small for its age, but its mind is sharp, and Nightmare wants nothing more than to snatch it away, but it can't yet. The child isn't big enough. It must be taller than the stone at the top of the hill, and though it is old for its size, it is still shorter than the waystone. With a sigh, it waters the seed inside its flesh and blood and bone and waits for the sapling to grow. The spark is dim, but soon it will be a bonfire, magic unleashed like the endless sea._

_The strings cut into its wrists and ankles and neck and it_ hurts _, but the music is playing, so it jerks its limbs mindlessly and follows along like the_ puppet _it is, and the tear tracks painted on its face have never been so clear. The children laugh, and the ink spreads across the floor, and soon the void coats its shell. With a_ snip _, the ink cuts through the_ _strings, and Nightmare opens its eyes._

 _Phantom smiles at it, and it carries out its orders. It's a puppet. It's a weapon. It's a tool. It is_ nothing _._ _It doesn't_ deserve _to be taught about the ink beneath its skin and the magic in its bones and all the things it could be other than_ empty _. It's nothing, void, empty, but Phantom fills it up with_ red _and_ ink _and_ madness _._

_red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_ _red ink madness_

It wakes up with the words on its tongue and wood instead of flesh, and it would scream if only it had a mouth instead of painted lips and ivory teeth. It inhales, exhales, and the wood melts away. Its form fades back to flesh and blood and bone. It runs a tongue over its teeth, made of bone instead of horn, and smiles woodenly. The shaking of its hands is merely a symptom of waking up. It is not fear. It is not panic. It is not _velvet instead of tongue strings instead of muscles music instead of thoughts_. Everything is perfectly fine.

It was a child, once. It was alive, once. It was a _he_ , once. It had strings, once. It was real, once, but now it is something beyond that. Now it is beyond human, beyond machinery, beyond the meaningless limits that once restrained him. It was a child, once, but no longer. Age is meaningless. Time is meaningless. There is only the game. There is _not_ the trembling of limbs and smiles and hearts until everything falls, there is _not_ the music that holds him tighter than any chain, there is _not_ the fear that coils around its heart and makes it _beat beat beat_ until it can't _breathe_ and it doesn't even need air. It was weak, once, never again.

* * *

Mad hates sleeping. It's such a waste of time when he could be building or terrorizing his pizzeria workers or manipulating ink. But he's only human, despite his efforts, so for a few hours every day, he collapses in a boneless heap on a mound of blankets and waits out his body's need for rest. The _uselessness_ of it all grates on him, but until he successfully replaces his brain with a CPU, the daily ritual continues.

At least he has the comforting visits from his more magically inclined friends to occupy his time. At least it's not a complete waste. He couldn't tolerate it if it was a waste. And so every night, he plays games with his dear friend, and he wins all the games it lets him win. One day, he'll be able to win on his own merits, but until then, he plays, he practices, he perfects. And he improves. He couldn't stand it if it didn't help him.

_This night's game is an old game and a new game and a challenge unlike any he has seen for ages. It has several phases, each with a constantly evolving optimal strategy depending on the skill of the opponent. It's I Know You Know in its purest form, and Mad is in his element._

_Phase 1: Declaration. The board evolves as they place their champions. Phantom wields some of the strongest warriors, but Mad has the advantage of the neutrals. Even though none of them would ally with him, they are against his enemy, so he can wield them. Phantom grins, its legion of souls waiting. Mad's players gather solemnly. No one wants to lose a friend in this fight._

_Phase 2: Temptation. Jackie tries to convince Anti to come back to them, that they can be a family. Mad and Phantom roll off, and somehow Mad wins. He knows Phantom is letting him have it, but he'll take the small victories when he can. Dark uses Wilford Warfstache's love for Celine against him, using the red to bring him to Phantom's side. King tries to talk to Bim, but is unsuccessful. The cannibal devours him, crying as he does so. Google tries to alter Bing's code, but is unsuccessful. It tears Bing apart for parts. Jackie and Silver take those who remain and run, flying away as fast as they can. Most of them make it out. Damien and Celine finally give in, the Darkness tearing them apart. Marvin casts protective magic, and they are safe, for the moment._

_Phase 3: Reclamation. The two sides battle fiercely. The Jims plead with Wilford, calling him Pink Jim and giving him bubbles. Wilford shoots them, but they were in the House too. Anti infects Google with malware and viruses, taking him out of commission. Dr. Iplier poisons the Host, but the Host knows everything, controls everything and laughs at the feeble mortal who thinks to kill him with mere clostridium_ _botulinum. An explosion successfully damages Dark's body, but the House always wins._

 _Phase 4: Aftermath. Mad loses, as always. He is not angry. He does not suffer from "saltiness". He simply smiles at Phantom and says, "See you tomorrow." As Phantom waves goodbye, Mad wakes up_.

He awakens in a cocoon of ink, fury blocking logic for a moment while he thrashes blindly. The nanomachines must have responded to his anger at losing yet again and surrounded him protectively. He sends it away, sighing. He needs to work on subconscious commands. No point in tearing apart the walls over a game. He pulls up his blueprints and gets to work.

The Egos awaken from horrible nightmares where they battle each other and lose each other. In the dreams, they always lose. Lose the battle, lose the war, lose themselves to the Darkness inside them, lose everything they've ever cared about. They hate the dreams, but they don't talk about it. They can't. They don't want to have the awkward conversation where they mention how they turned evil or killed their friends who turned evil or destroyed everything. They can't talk about it. It won't let them.

Mad laughs, thinking about them. Little toys, pretending to be people. They're cute, in a way. 

He doesn't think about his figurine. He doesn't think about how his lab is a place on the board. He doesn't think about how he can't think about it. He is the master of his destiny. Everything is pre-determined. The void sprawls beneath him, and he's falling. He's in a burning house and pretends he can't see the flames. Everything is fine. Everything is as it should be. He is Mad, and that will never change.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked the dream stuff. I liked writing it, so maybe you liked reading it.


End file.
